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Brown School Library

Location: Brown Hall, 3rd Floor
Serving the research and teaching needs of the Brown School community in social work, public health, and social policy.

Course Reserves: How To

Course Required texts, eBooks, articles, and streaming videos can be made available to your students.

Instructions for Instructors

Send a copy of your syllabus, or just a list of the materials you plan to require, to brownlibrary@wustl.edu.

Of note: Including information about the last time you taught the course can help to speed up our work. 


Course Reserve Service Details:

  • Course Required Materials: Brown School Library will assist with course required materials. For assistance linking Suggested, Recommended, and Supplemental Readings to your course see this guide from Olin Library.
  • Streaming videos are available for 1 semester due to copyright and licensing restrictions. Instructors should email brownlibrary@wustl.edu with streaming video requests at least 2 weeks before the beginning of each semester.
  • eBooks - Our busy students have expressed a strong desire for electronic access to their course required materials. Please email the Brown School Library so we can help determine whether or not your course required textbooks are available to the library to purchase for electronic distribution.  
  • Print Books: Please know that we cannot digitize an entire print book due to copyright restrictions, even if it is for educational use. Please see below for more guidance regarding Copyright Law and what that means for course required materials. 

*Please know that the existence of an eBook does not mean publishers will allow libraries to purchase that book for library lending. To find out if an eBook you want to use is available to the library for purchase, please email the Brown School Library.


DEI Faculty Syllabus Guide

Consider adding these DEI sources to your syllabus as recommended by the Brown School DEI Committee. 

New in 2022

The Brown School Library is beginning to transition courses to the software used by Olin Library for managing library electronic course reserves called Ares. Brown School Library staff will continue to purchase, gather, and make materials available for your course, just as we’ve always done, however, the new system also allows for additional instructor self-service options. Please view the video entitled “Instructor Web Interface” to learn more about Ares for electronic course reserves: https://support.atlas-sys.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500010274202-Demo-Video-Series  

What this means: 

  • Students and instructors will have one place to go (https://ares.wustl.edu/ares/) to access article/book chapter PDFs, eBooks, and streaming videos for all courses they are currently enrolled in or teach that use Brown School Library course reserves. Print and electronic book information is still available through the Course Reserves section of the Library Catalog. 
  • Please note: Links to individual items, such as citations to articles, eBooks, and PDFs will no longer be added to your syllabus by library staff.
  • Library staff can add custom tagging to help organize your course readings based upon your syllabus. For example, tags can be created to pull together all readings by date, Required, or even by topic. You can specify your preference(s).  

Benefits of this transition:  

  • Library staff can reactivate your courses each semester to save staff time and prevent errors.
  • Library staff can manage your course reserves and make any needed additions or adjustments to links behind the scenes all semester long. No additional changes will need to be made to your syllabus once we provide you the link and you can continue to make edits to your syllabus, as well!  
  • Library resource lists are customized to those students and faculty who are enrolled or working with a particular course.

Campus Bookstore

Campus Store Course Book Store Orders

Brown School Library does not provide this service

Course book orders can be ordered online, emailed to coursebooks@wustl.edu, or by phone at 935-5591 or 935-5584

To order textbooks for your students to purchase at the Campus Bookstore, the following information is needed:

  • instructor name
  • contact information
  • department
  • course number and section(s)
  • author
  • title
  • edition
  • ISBN 

Please include estimated enrollment and if the book(s) are required or optional for the students to purchase. 

Copyright Law in Brief

Copyright Law in Brief

Copyright law allows us to scan and upload only 10% of a title for the whole semester for a class. 

  • libraries own the material and you are using less than 10% = we can make a digital copy and link it into your syllabus
  • library owns the material in print only and you are using more than 10% = a student can check out the book on a first come first serve basis.
  • library does not own the material and it is only available* to the library for purchase in print = Availability is not guaranteed, and ordering & shipping times vary. Contact Brown School Library to ask about your course titles as soon as possible with questions.

For more information on copyright and fair use, see our guidelines